Investigation of Personal Rapid Transit Station Capacities using Microscopic Traffic Simulation: Fid-Bau Portal

Investigation of Personal Rapid Transit Station Capacities using Microscopic Traffic Simulation

Arslan, Oytun / Reichert, Max / Sellaouti, Anis / Hoffmann, Silja

Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is a promising on-demand transport system, where small-sized autonomous vehicles bring passengers directly from A to B on their dedicated guideways with a relatively high operational speed at low costs. However, served capacities of PRT systems are often less than attractive alternative modes such as mass rail transit and capacity plays a crucial role in the acceptance of PRT. Capacity of a PRT is affected mostly by the main guideway capacity, number of vehicles and station capacity. This paper focuses on the latter factor and aims at investigating the station capacities by modelling various station layouts in a microscopic traffic simulation environment. Five station layouts were modelled in the microsimulation software Vissim for different numbers of berths and different boarding/alighting behaviors by using the autonomous vehicle car following models. Results show that the loosened design of a serial station with an additional station guideway offers the highest capacity among other layouts. The station layouts where vehicles need to reverse or require time for using the 90-degree parking module lead to a considerable loss in capacity. It has also been found out that increasing number of berths increase the capacity, yet the relation is not directly proportional since the capacity increase slows down per additional berth. Benefits and drawbacks of the methodology as well as ideas for further research in the field are also discussed at the end of the paper.